By: Paul S. Marchand
SUMMARY: The organized effort of the Sanford, FL, PD, defenders of George Zimmerman, and the right-wing noise machine to trash the memory of Trayvon Martin resembles similar efforts to besmirch the memory of Matthew Shepard. In an increasingly diverse society such as ours, such practices should frighten all of us worse than bombs.
SUMMARY: The organized effort of the Sanford, FL, PD, defenders of George Zimmerman, and the right-wing noise machine to trash the memory of Trayvon Martin resembles similar efforts to besmirch the memory of Matthew Shepard. In an increasingly diverse society such as ours, such practices should frighten all of us worse than bombs.
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If you have no case, abuse the other side. If you represent an unattractive defendant, blame the victim. Any lawyer can tell you that these are two critical tricks of the trade in our profession.
So, it is hardly surprising that as public outrage over the so-called self-defense killing of Trayvon Martin continues to grow, defenders of the shooter, together with enablers of the Sanford, Florida Police Department, should be working overtime to try to tarnish Trayvon Martin’s personality and credibility. They have been aided and abetted in their efforts by an increasingly unified and race-driven right-wing narrative that takes as its starting point the automatic postulate that anyone with dark skin must be guilty of dark deeds.
Such a postulate goes hand-in-glove with the one which deems queerfolk, of which I am one, to be an existential threat to western civilization. Thus, as I watch new developments in the Trayvon Martin case emerge with every passing day, I find myself thinking back to the murder of Matthew Shepard, almost half a generation ago.
For we saw the same dynamics unfold after Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die, strung up on a Wyoming fence post in a vicious parody of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. While most decent Americans found themselves feeling and expressing shock and outrage, the right-wing smear machine quickly swung into action, working to present a narrative of Matthew Shepard as some kind of dangerous homosexual threat to authentic American manhood.
In both the Trayvon Martin and Matthew Shepard cases, right-wing blowhards made haste to suggest, both directly and through calculated innuendo, that both Trayvon Martin and Matthew Shepard had had it coming to them -- that they have somehow acted toward their murderers in a way that invited their own killings. Trayvon Martin ---at least according to the egregious Geraldo Rivera--- deserved what he got at least in part because he was wearing a “come shoot me” hoodie, and Matthew Shepard certainly should have known better then to “flaunt” his sexuality.
Of course the “he needed killin’” defense has its counterpart in what Rick Santorum might call the “sexual realm.” Women who have been raped are often tarred with the same kind of narrative: she asked for it. She was wearing “come f--k me pumps,” or “she was dressed provocatively.” Whatever she was saying, or wearing, in this theory, justifies sexual assault.
At all events, it does not surprise me that, as with Matthew Shepard, the memory and reputation of Trayvon Martin should have come under organized attack from a variety of usual suspects. First, of course, is the incompetent Sanford Police Department whose own version of events has now been contradicted by the damning revelation that their own investigator found George Zimmerman’s version of events unconvincing, and urged that a warrant issue for Zimmerman’s arrest on a charge of manslaughter. The series of leaks emanating from the department, all of them intended to cast aspersions on a dead 17-year-old who cannot speak for himself, raises a strong inference that the department itself is operating with a corporate consciousness of guilt.
Second, the various attempts of such Zimmerman defenders as Joe Oliver --- whose self-destructive interview performance last night with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was painful to watch --- to try to prehabilitate Zimmerman against the possibility that he will, at some point, be charged, arrested, and tried, also suggests a sense within the Zimmerman camp that Zimmerman himself is not merely an unattractive potential defendant, but a positive danger to society whose image needs some polishing before he can be presented to a jury of his peers.
Finally, like Matthew Shepard’s presence in a honky-tonk bar in a small Wyoming town, Trayvon Martin’s presence in a gated condominium community in Florida represented perhaps the ultimate transgressive challenge to right-wing culture warriors’ views of How Things Ought To Be. Both Matthew Shepard and Trayvon Martin represented an Other, whose presences in that honky-tonk bar or gated community were so apparently counterintuitive as to trigger homicidal responses. Nonetheless, being a stranger or Other in a counterintuitive place is never, in itself, a justification for murder.
Thus, in order to excuse otherwise inexcusable violence against the stranger/Other, right-wing culture warriors must create a threat narrative, in which the stranger, whether Matthew Shepard or Trayvon Martin, is presented not merely as a cultural outsider, but as an existential threat. Thus it was that the right wing tried ---rather without supporting evidence--- to present both young men as “aggressors,” and made much of the fact that Matthew Shepard had recently tested positive for HIV, or that --- shock of shocks --- Trayvon Martin might have been associated with smoking pot.
In a previous post, I suggested that those of us who are in some way Other have once again been reminded that our place in the Commonwealth remains equivocal. In light of what has been happening, and in light of what happened after Matthew Shepard was murdered, we Others must also remind ourselves that if we are the subject of violence on account of our race, our religion, our gender, or our sexuality, there will always be right-wing defenders of regressive social and political dispensations who will line up to trash our reputations as we are alive and to malign our memory if we are dead, to turn us into the aggressors and to try to claim the mantle of victimhood for our tormentors.
It should not have mattered that Matthew Shepard was gay and HIV-positive, nor should it matter that Trayvon Martin was African-American and might have smoked pot. What should have mattered is that both were victims of violence apparently directed against them on account of their being Other. The message that has been coming from the right since Trayvon Martin’s death is the same as the message that came from them after Matthew Shepard was murdered: being Other can still be a capital crime in which any weedy loser with a gun and a bad attitude is entitled to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
In a country composed of every sort and condition of human being, such a notion ought to frighten us worse than bombs.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a city councilmember. The views expressed herein are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which he is associated. They are not intended, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
If you have no case, abuse the other side. If you represent an unattractive defendant, blame the victim. Any lawyer can tell you that these are two critical tricks of the trade in our profession.
So, it is hardly surprising that as public outrage over the so-called self-defense killing of Trayvon Martin continues to grow, defenders of the shooter, together with enablers of the Sanford, Florida Police Department, should be working overtime to try to tarnish Trayvon Martin’s personality and credibility. They have been aided and abetted in their efforts by an increasingly unified and race-driven right-wing narrative that takes as its starting point the automatic postulate that anyone with dark skin must be guilty of dark deeds.
Such a postulate goes hand-in-glove with the one which deems queerfolk, of which I am one, to be an existential threat to western civilization. Thus, as I watch new developments in the Trayvon Martin case emerge with every passing day, I find myself thinking back to the murder of Matthew Shepard, almost half a generation ago.
For we saw the same dynamics unfold after Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die, strung up on a Wyoming fence post in a vicious parody of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. While most decent Americans found themselves feeling and expressing shock and outrage, the right-wing smear machine quickly swung into action, working to present a narrative of Matthew Shepard as some kind of dangerous homosexual threat to authentic American manhood.
In both the Trayvon Martin and Matthew Shepard cases, right-wing blowhards made haste to suggest, both directly and through calculated innuendo, that both Trayvon Martin and Matthew Shepard had had it coming to them -- that they have somehow acted toward their murderers in a way that invited their own killings. Trayvon Martin ---at least according to the egregious Geraldo Rivera--- deserved what he got at least in part because he was wearing a “come shoot me” hoodie, and Matthew Shepard certainly should have known better then to “flaunt” his sexuality.
Of course the “he needed killin’” defense has its counterpart in what Rick Santorum might call the “sexual realm.” Women who have been raped are often tarred with the same kind of narrative: she asked for it. She was wearing “come f--k me pumps,” or “she was dressed provocatively.” Whatever she was saying, or wearing, in this theory, justifies sexual assault.
At all events, it does not surprise me that, as with Matthew Shepard, the memory and reputation of Trayvon Martin should have come under organized attack from a variety of usual suspects. First, of course, is the incompetent Sanford Police Department whose own version of events has now been contradicted by the damning revelation that their own investigator found George Zimmerman’s version of events unconvincing, and urged that a warrant issue for Zimmerman’s arrest on a charge of manslaughter. The series of leaks emanating from the department, all of them intended to cast aspersions on a dead 17-year-old who cannot speak for himself, raises a strong inference that the department itself is operating with a corporate consciousness of guilt.
Second, the various attempts of such Zimmerman defenders as Joe Oliver --- whose self-destructive interview performance last night with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was painful to watch --- to try to prehabilitate Zimmerman against the possibility that he will, at some point, be charged, arrested, and tried, also suggests a sense within the Zimmerman camp that Zimmerman himself is not merely an unattractive potential defendant, but a positive danger to society whose image needs some polishing before he can be presented to a jury of his peers.
Finally, like Matthew Shepard’s presence in a honky-tonk bar in a small Wyoming town, Trayvon Martin’s presence in a gated condominium community in Florida represented perhaps the ultimate transgressive challenge to right-wing culture warriors’ views of How Things Ought To Be. Both Matthew Shepard and Trayvon Martin represented an Other, whose presences in that honky-tonk bar or gated community were so apparently counterintuitive as to trigger homicidal responses. Nonetheless, being a stranger or Other in a counterintuitive place is never, in itself, a justification for murder.
Thus, in order to excuse otherwise inexcusable violence against the stranger/Other, right-wing culture warriors must create a threat narrative, in which the stranger, whether Matthew Shepard or Trayvon Martin, is presented not merely as a cultural outsider, but as an existential threat. Thus it was that the right wing tried ---rather without supporting evidence--- to present both young men as “aggressors,” and made much of the fact that Matthew Shepard had recently tested positive for HIV, or that --- shock of shocks --- Trayvon Martin might have been associated with smoking pot.
In a previous post, I suggested that those of us who are in some way Other have once again been reminded that our place in the Commonwealth remains equivocal. In light of what has been happening, and in light of what happened after Matthew Shepard was murdered, we Others must also remind ourselves that if we are the subject of violence on account of our race, our religion, our gender, or our sexuality, there will always be right-wing defenders of regressive social and political dispensations who will line up to trash our reputations as we are alive and to malign our memory if we are dead, to turn us into the aggressors and to try to claim the mantle of victimhood for our tormentors.
It should not have mattered that Matthew Shepard was gay and HIV-positive, nor should it matter that Trayvon Martin was African-American and might have smoked pot. What should have mattered is that both were victims of violence apparently directed against them on account of their being Other. The message that has been coming from the right since Trayvon Martin’s death is the same as the message that came from them after Matthew Shepard was murdered: being Other can still be a capital crime in which any weedy loser with a gun and a bad attitude is entitled to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
In a country composed of every sort and condition of human being, such a notion ought to frighten us worse than bombs.
-xxx-
PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a city councilmember. The views expressed herein are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which he is associated. They are not intended, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
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